The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey, Miles Harvey (Illustrator)

From Barnes & Noble

In the tradition of The Orchid Thief comes Miles Harvey's The Island of Lost Maps, an investigative look at the strange case of "greatest American map thief in history," Gilbert Bland Jr., a middle-aged, unremarkable chameleon who switched personnas, careers, and families in pursuit of rare and historic maps. According to the FBI," Harvey writes, "Bland had stolen maps from at least seventeen libraries across the United States and two in Canada. He was, it turned out, the Al Capone of cartography...."

From the Publisher

The Island of Lost Maps tells the story of a curious crime spree: the theft of scores of valuable centuries-old maps from some of the most prominent research libraries in the United States and Canada. The perpetrator was Gilbert Joseph Bland, Jr., an enigmatic antiques dealer from South Florida, whose cross-country slash-and-dash operation had gone virtually undetected until he was caught in 1995–and was unmasked as the most prolific American map thief in history. As Miles Harvey unravels the mystery of Bland’s life, he maps out the world of cartography and cartographic crime, weaving together a fascinating story of exploration, craftsmanship, villainy, and the lure of the unknown.

Miami Herald - Margaria Fichtner

[Harvey] has managed to produce a brisk and humorous piece of business that keeps the reader engaged even when it wanders into arcane cul-de-sacs of mapmaking, map collecting, map scholarship and lore.

Susan Orlean

An intriguing literary adventure story, written with flair, imagination, and precision. By recreating the journey of a strange and remarkable map thief, author Miles Harvey takes readers on a compelling exploration of the weird world of maps.

Simon Winchester

Beguiling…as with the best of maps, the more one looks, the more fascinating and intriguing it all becomes.

USA Today

A fascinating intellectual adventure story…an astonishingly imaginative book.

Publishers Weekly

Harvey himself sometimes seems obsessed as he explores the obsession of those who collect maps. Still, this is a challenging and erudite exploration of the explosion in "map culture" and the damage wrought by one determined con man with cartographic passions. Harvey's primary narrative (which originated as an article for Outside magazine) concerns the exploits of Gilbert Bland, a man who on the surface, according to Harvey, did indeed seem bland but who stole approximately $500,000 in antique maps from poorly secured rare-book libraries. Bland was apprehended in 1995 at Baltimore's Peabody Library; he was ultimately charged in several jurisdictions after numerous universities discovered extensive losses, but he plea-bargained for a light sentence. Harvey painstakingly reconstructs the map thief's various identities--for Bland, a "chameleon," had abandoned a number of spouses and children and had engaged in questionable business ventures. Thus is Harvey launched into a larger meditation on the lure of "terra incognita," both literal and metaphoric, whether of Bland's enigmatic life or of undiscovered continents. Harvey uses the Bland case to explore both cartographic history and the dangers of obsession. One collector he examines is controversial map megadealer Graham Arader, considered responsible for cartography's newfound commercialism. Harvey's pursuit of all possible tangents (he even visits a map factory) causes his narrative to become unwieldy at times. But he offers dry wit and a fine sense of the dark places in our contemporary landscape, and he successfully captures both the story of Bland's bizarre "map crime spree" and the underexamined history and politics of contemporary cartography. Agent, Sloan Harris. 50,ooo first printing; 8-city author tour. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Harvey, a book-review columnist for Outside and a person whom "maps spoke to," embarks here upon an exploration not only of cartographic crime but also of the terra incognito of that strange subculture of obsessive collectors driven "to transgress laws or moral codes-in part because overcoming the obstacles?between the collector and the desired object is exactly what makes the experience so rewarding." The crime spree of Gilbert Joseph Bland Jr.-who stole scores of valuable maps from some of the most prominent research libraries in the United States and Canada-is the major story of this rambling if well-documented study, but Harvey's real focus is the metaphor of the map, which "provides no answers. It only suggests where to look: discover this, re-examine that, put one thing in relation to another, orient yourself, begin here." While completing the biography of the elusive Bland, Harvey fleshes out this metaphor with side-excursions into the early world of map-making, the never-ending struggle of map-makers to keep their products from being purloined by other map-makers, and the interesting behavior and symptoms of those afflicted with what map-collectors call "Cartomania." An intriguing book; recommended for public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ5/1/00; for more on Harvey, see "BEA Reveals Emergence of E-Book?," p.12-13.-Ed.]-Robert C. Jones, Central Missouri State Univ. Warrensburg

Publishers Weekly - Handicapping the Fall Titles

This year that break-out book might just be The Island of Lost Maps. . .

Publishers Weekly - BEA Show Daily

Booksellers responded to the anticipated allure of adventures in cartographic crime promised in The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey by snatching up 600 galleys the first day of the show.

Bella Stander

Late in this fascinating book, author Miles Harvey muses, "A discovery has less to do with revelation than with declaration. Just as the word explore comes from the Latin for 'to cry out,' discovery is the act of making known. Christopher Columbus was not the first to arrive in America: his genius was in introducing the New World to the old one." In following the trail of the aptly named Gilbert Bland, the nondescript man who under various aliases stole rare maps from libraries across North America, intrepid explorer Harvey displays his genius for making known the world of maps and its enormous influence on human events. He cites such examples as Columbus and his cartographer brother, Bartholomeo; John Charles Fremont, a.k.a. "the Pathfinder," who, due to his exploration and (sometimes inaccurate) mapping of the American West in the 1840s, "helped fuel one of the greatest migrations in American history"; and last year's accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, by NATO forces due to an out-of-date map. Using simple yet eloquent language--sometimes profoundly so--Harvey deftly interweaves a true detective story with a history of mapmaking and its Siamese twin, map theft (practiced by explorers through the centuries, including the Columbus brothers), and meditations on such topics as greed, imaginary islands, the age-old search for El Dorado, the compulsion to collect things and the emotional repercussions of having a convict in the family. Even with the astonishing breadth and depth of information that Harvey conveys, The Island of Lost Maps is smartly paced, with an engaging cast of characters: the shadowy Mr. Bland, with whom our trusty guide draws compelling parallels to "the Pathfinder"; a colorful Virginia map dealer and bon vivant; the dogged investigator for the University of Virginia Police Department who brought Bland to justice; and the FBI special agent who was responsible for returning the stolen maps to their institutional owners, some of whom to this day won't check whether any maps are missing because they refuse to admit their security systems could have been breached. It's obvious that Harvey did a staggering amount of research--the notes at book's end run nearly forty pages. He quotes from such disparate sources as Daniel Boorstin, Franz Kafka, Shakespeare, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, various medieval and Renaissance travelers and, best of all, an inscription in a Spanish monastery that should be inscribed over every library door and on every bookplate: "For him that steals, or borrows and returns not, a book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy; and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw at his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not. And when at last he goes to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever."

What People Are Saying

Susan Orlean
The Island of Lost Maps is an intriguing literary adventure story, written with flair, imagination, and precision. By recreating the journey of a strange and remarkable map thief, author Miles Harvey takes readers on a compelling exploration of the weird world of maps.
—author of The Orchid Thief

Simon Winchester
Just like the most elegant of the maps at the center of this intricate tale, Miles Harvey's impeccably-written guide to the extraordinary and unsung obsessions of the cartomaniac is intriguing, beguiling and refined. And as with the best of maps, the more one looks, the more fascinating and intriguing it all becomes.
—author of The Professor and the Madman

Michael Paterniti
Every once in a blue moon you read a book that leaves you absolutely breathless, reminding you of the bright, hidden worlds within our world. This is that book, a glimmering, supersonic journey into terra incognita where Miles Harvey, acting as writer and slueth, persues America's greatest map thief. This is a riveting book of twists and turns, unexpected confessions and deep human truths.
—author of Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

They controlled the region for more than three hundred years-an entire empire built on getting one's hands on the right maps. By the end of the eighteenth century, that empire's most profitable export was a little bean, which the Dutch had begun to grow in Java in 1696. When brewed this bean produced an exhilarating beverage that the Dutch called koffie-a word passed on to the Malay and Indonesian languages as kopi.


Which brings me to the second story on my wall, a December 21, 1995, Chicago Tribune report about another man who got into trouble for stealing maps:

TAMARAC, Fla.-The small, subdued man in khaki pants asked to visit the rare book room. Library curators checked his credentials, logging him as a visitor from Florida. He went inside.
Minutes later, pandemonium-the man fleeing, security guards chasing, police asking why anyone would steal a map from a 232-year-old library book and sprint through the streets of Baltimore.
        Clues, it turns out, rest in Tamarac-home to Gilbert Bland, Jr., alias James Perry, a suspect in the theft ... at Johns Hopkins University and perhaps scores more [burglaries of old maps] from libraries along the East Coast.

I had no idea, the first time I read those words, that they would soon be chiseled into my mind. Yet I do remember feeling an unusually intense jolt of curiosity, as fiery and bracing as the coffee I had raised to my lips. In those days I spent a great deal of time at the Kopi, a self-proclaimed "traveler's café" whose walls were adorned with masks from Bali and shelves were filled with Lonely Planet guides to far-flung destinations. I was then the literary critic for Outside magazine, a great job but one that was beginning to wear on my patience. The books I read were about people who climbed Himalayan peaks or rode bicycles through Africa or sailed wooden boats across the Atlantic or trekked into restricted areas of China. These tales of adventure filled my days and my imagination, yet my own life was anything but adventurous, the hours spent slogging through book after book in a dark corner of that coffeehouse or staring endlessly into a computer screen. The interior of the Kopi was ringed by clocks, each one showing the time in some distant locale, and as I watched the weeks tick away in Timbuktu and Juneau and Goa and Denpasar and Yogyakarta, I began to long for an adventure of my own. Or maybe adventure isn't quite the word. It was not that I had any particular desire to do something death-defying; what I wanted was a quest, a goal, a riddle to solve, a destination. My craving, I believe, was not unlike the one Joseph Conrad described in Heart of Darkness:

Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, "When I grow up I will go there."

Looking back now, I think that what Conrad called "blank spaces" had much to do with why that article so completely commandeered my imagination from the start. In retrospect, I think I was intrigued not so much by what the story said but by what it left looming between the lines. What was it about these mysterious old maps that people found so alluring? And what kind of person would wander so far and put so much on the line for their acquisition? Who was this Gilbert Bland? I did not yet know how difficult these questions were. I did not yet know that trying to answer them would take up a huge portion of my life. I did not yet know that, even as I sat sipping coffee, my quest had begun.

All I knew was that I had to know more. I had heard about the bizarre case of Stephen Carrie Blumberg, who, during the 1970s and 1980s, removed as many as 23,600 books and manuscripts from 268 libraries in forty-five states, two Canadian provinces, and the District of Columbia. Consumed by what he called "the passion to collect, "Blumberg employed an astonishing variety of tricks to build his illicit collection. He picked locks; he stole keys; he threw volumes out of library windows; he crawled through ductwork and hid in elevator shafts; he assumed the identity of a University of Minnesota professor; he even altered books, while still inside a library, so that they appeared to be his own. Then he would haul his takings to a house in rural Ottumwa, Iowa, where he filled nine thirteen-foot-high rooms with books shelved from floor to ceiling and meticulously arranged them according to a catalog system of his own making. He somehow convinced himself that he was not really stealing but "rescuing" the books from institutions that did not give them the attention and care they deserved. Although his collection was worth up to $20 million, Blumberg never sold a single book. I wondered if Gilbert Bland had a similar compulsion for hoarding hot maps.

But I was just as fascinated by the possibility that Bland was in it for the money. For centuries thieves have reaped big rewards by catering to the peculiar needs of collectors. In our own culture extensive black markets exist for everything from art to animals and sports memorabilia-but history offers some even more outlandish examples. In the twelfth and again in the sixteenth century, for instance, the popularity of a medicinal elixir made from, of all things, the flesh of Egyptian mummies led to a booming business in grave robbing. 'Alas, poor Egypt!" wrote Louis Reutter de Rosement. 'After having known civilization at its zenith, after having sacrificed its all to respect its dead, it was now forced to see the eternal dwellings of its venerated kings despoiled, profaned, and violated and the bodies of its sons turned into drugs for foreigners."

With our own tedious era sadly devoid of contraband pharaoh goo, Bland's alleged crime spree seemed about as interesting a subject as a writer-especially a writer with his own lifelong love of maps-could hope to find. I began to look into the caper and discovered that it was even more extensive than was originally reported. According to the FBI, Bland had stolen maps from at least seventeen libraries across the United States and two in Canada. He was, it turned out, the Al Capone of cartography, the greatest American map thief in history

I took the story to my editors at Outside, who found the case deliciously offbeat and assigned a lengthy feature on Mr. Bland. I thought I would finish it in six weeks. But when it finally appeared in the June 1997 issue, I had worked on it for more than a year-and my labors had only just begun. By the time I completed research on this book, the investigation had consumed four years of my life.

Bland proved to be an extremely enigmatic and unwilling subject and, despite it all, a fascinating one. He was a chameleon. He changed careers and families without looking back; when a daughter from his first marriage asked him for help with buying a car, he refused, saying, "You're a stranger." He could seem to switch age before your eyes, appearing worldweary one minute and boyish the next. Medium height, medium weight, middle-aged, middle everything-he was a cipher, a blank slate; in cartographic terms, terra incognita. He was Bland: "1. Characterized by a moderate, undisturbing, or tranquil quality. 2. Lacking distinctive character."

Because he turned down all my requests to interview him, both for the article and, later, for this book-I was forced to build my profile the slow, hard way: visiting the places he worked and lived; walking through crime scenes; talking to family members, friends, business associates, and victims; methodically piecing together his past through criminal records, court documents, military files, computer databases, and other sources of public record. The more snooping I did, the more I began to see my quest for information as similar to that of the Houtman brothers, and my attempts to make sense of it like the task faced by Mercator. Filling in a life, it turned out, was like filling in a map, and my search for Gilbert Bland soon transformed from an investigation into an adventure. Along the way, I happened upon a curious subculture made up of map historians, map librarians, map dealers, and map collectors-all gripped by an obsession both surreal and sublime. Like the explorers of old, I found myself heading farther and farther into strange waters, never quite sure if I had found what I was looking for, but endlessly filled with bemusement and wonder.